From: Rainer Subject: Rainer's Europe Trip 1998 -- part 23 Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 18:44:16 EDT Friday, 10/16 -- part 23 The short night was shortened by my waking up early. Vera and Monika had slept through the 0600 church bell concert outside our window. I guess they were getting used to it. I decided to check what I'd written the night before, run it through the spell checker, that sort of thing. The laptop froze up and had to be restarted. When it came back, the file I had been working on was empty. All of a sudden I'd lost the desire to write anymore. Stupid PC. But, that's over with now. As gloomy as I felt inside, it was another sunny day outside, however. Vera and I had breakfast at the hotel. Monika wanted to sleep in and she'd tired of the continental breakfast fare. On our way out of Triesenberg we stopped at you-can-guess-where for some blueberry muffins and donuts. We left Liechtenstein and headed for Interlaken. The autobahn through the Alps is great. When in the wide valleys, the scenery is staggering. When in the mountains, you don't see a thing since you drive through tunnels. We'd checked the maps before we left, even used the European equivalent of Street Atlas USA on the laptop to verify the route. We did okay until we got near Zug. We recovered much better than in Berlin and got on the mountain highway to Interlaken. The Alps here were quite hazy. We passed several long and probably deep Alpine lakes. The little village of Iseltwald beckoned as we drove by one of these lakes and we stopped for pictures and lunch. The Super Grill food vendor set up by the lake provided an unexpectedly delicious menu. We fed a mute swan some bread as it swam passed our table by the lake's edge. You could hear and see the electric trains across the lake heading in and our of Interlaken. You could hear the cow bells on the hills. It was very pretty here and much warmer that I had expected -- especially for October. Interlaken reminds me a bit of Colorado near Silverton or Durango, but it's at a much lower elevation. The Hotel Beau-Site that we picked out of a hotel guide in Liechtenstein proved easy to find. We didn't pick the hotel because of it's name. We picked it because of it's view. Two adjoining rooms on the second floor looked out upon two of the three snow capped peaks, Jungfrau and Moench. The Eiger was hidden by intervening mountains. Although the mountains around the town of Interlaken seemed high, none were covered by snow -- expect for the snow capped peaks I just mentioned. Very unlike Mittenwald or Ehrwald. Although the hotel had a great view, we were not to spend very much time in the rooms. We were planning to go into the mountains tomorrow keeping our fingers crossed that the beautiful weather would hold. It was pretty late in the afternoon now so we parked the car downvillage (downtown seems wrong) and explored. The hotel had the funny Swiss phones so we kept our eyes open for some sort of computer place. We inquired at the post office -- center of much telecommunications in Europe and got an address. We found Buddy's Pub and Internet Cafe -- but their internet access was broken. We also found a little computer shop that was only open from 1800-2100. We noted the address and continued exploring. We passed a Mexican restaurant and it was a no-brainer that this is where we would have dinner later. There were dozen or more paragliders that must have launched off a nearby alp and which landed in a field in downvillage Interlaken. Some were riding double. I pictured Mike Stanbro riding in on one of these. I had to make a detour back to the parking lot. Your only allowed to put 90 minutes on the meter, and the meters are running until 1900. We stopped for a beer and wine on one of the many sidewalk cafes. Even though the sun was behind the mountains now, it was still T-shirt weather. This brings up another thing we noticed: not very many people wear T-shirts in Europe. Jeans, yes. T-shirts, no. Oh well, we stand out that way. Plus, hardly anyone wears shorts. In fact, people all over Europe are dressed much too warmly. While we're walking around feeling warm in T-shirts and jeans, people have on long-sleeved shirts, sweaters, and long coats. It really is bizarre. We found the Mexican restaurant back, noted that Italian music was playing in the background and ordered from the waitress who was working here in Switzerland but was really Swedish and who spoke English better than she did German. Needless to say, the Mexican food was not what us Oregonians expected. After dinner we visited the computer store that was now open. The young man working there tried everything to hook up the laptop to his ISDN lines, but nothing worked. Monika was able to send some email to her friends and discovered that keyboards in Europe are not like keyboards in the US. Interchanging the Y and Z keys makes for weird touch-typing. It was a fun visit nonetheless. We paid for the access and got a business card -- for all our friends that need computer access in Interlaken. Back at the hotel I sacked out early and have no real idea what the rest of my family did on their respective surfaces.